Rolf Kühn

Rolf Kühn was born on September 29, 1929 in Leipzig and at the age of eight he already began to play piano, and studied music theory and composition. At the age of 12 he began playing clarinet. For eight consecutive years, between 1954 and 1962, he won the European “Jazz Polls” as the “best clarinettist”, this enabled him to perform on numerous occasions in the USA. In 1957, the “Down Beat”-poll awarded him the “Clarinet New Star” prize. On account of his friendship to John Hammond, he was invited to become a member of the Benny Goodman Band in 1958. In 1962, he was nominated as head of the NDR-Television orchestra in Hamburg, and his first album “Impressions of New York” was recorded. Diverse tours led him to Russia as well as South America. Since 1968, he was the musical director for numerous TV productions, world premieres, and German premieres among them “Jesus Christ Superstar”, “Chicago”, “I do, I do”, and “Cabaret”. He was also nominated as the musical director of the 750th anniversary celebration of Berlin and the 700th anniversary celebrations in Switzerland. In addition to many CD productions and tours he was the author of the musical project “Munchhausen Junior”, which successfully premiered on October 31, 2004 at the Friedrichstadtpalast in Berlin.